While Valve has been quite adamant about not working on new version of the Steam Deck, a new report has indicated that the company might be eyeing a 2028 launch window for the next generation of its Linux-based handheld gaming PC. Reputable industry leaker KeplerL2 mentioned this in a post on the NeoGAF forums, where they also posited that the ongoing memory shortages could end up delaying these plans. On the other hand, a delay could also potentially give Valve the room to go with better hardware, since the handheld’s chip isn’t expected to be a semi-custom one.
“They were targeting 2028 [as far as I know], but the whole RAM/NAND situation could delay it,” wrote KeplerL2. “Also, since they don’t have a semi-custom SoC, unlike the PS6/Xbox, if it gets delayed, it could end up with better specs.”
Since its launch back in February 2022, the Steam Deck has proven to be quite successful for Valve, and recent trends in memory prices have even left the company with having to deal with greater demand than it can supply.
The handheld is powered by a quad-core AMD CPU running on Zen 2 architecture with 8 threads, giving it a clock speed of between 2.4 GHz and 3.5 GHz, depending on the software’s needs. This was paired with an RDNA 2-based GPU with eight compute units clocked at between 1 and 1.6 GHz, and 16 GB of unified LPDDR5 memory that was either clocked at 5500 MT/s or 6400 MT/s, depending on whether you had the LCD or OLED version of the Steam Deck.
Valve’s thoughts on making a new version of the Steam Deck have largely revolved around the company waiting for major generational jump for hardware, not just in terms of raw specs but also things like energy efficiency. Back in October 2024, Valve designer Lawrence Yang spoke about how there was no reason for Valve to work on yearly iterations of the handheld.
“It is important to us, and we’ve tried to be really clear, we are not doing the yearly cadence,” Yang said. “We’re not going to do a bump every year. There’s no reason to do that. And, honestly, from our perspective, that’s kind of not really fair to your customers to come out with something so soon that’s only incrementally better. So we really do want to wait for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life before we ship the real second generation of Steam Deck. But it is something that we’re excited about and we’re working on.”
In more recent times, the company has likely had its hands full with trying to launch the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and new Steam Controller, which were unveiled back in November 2025. While there hasn’t yet been any solid launch window announced for the three products, the company has noted that it is still trying to release them in 2026. “More updates will be shared as we finalize our plans,” it wrote in a Steamworks Development post. The hardware delays have largely been blamed on memory and storage shortages.